SAFELY

Project description

SAFELY, an innovative project in assistive robotics, aims to significantly enhance patient safety in healthcare settings. The project utilizes PAL Robotics’ mobile manipulator, TIAGo, to proactively identify and reduce hazardous situations, such as fall detection or misplaced elements in care environments. This initiative is crucial in addressing delayed responses to such situations, which can obstruct the recovery process of elderly patients.

SAFELY is designed to seamlessly integrate into hospital and care home routines, offering an extra layer of proactive monitoring and significantly reducing response times in critical scenarios.

PAL Robotics is primarily focusing on enhancing the capabilities of Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs) in healthcare settings. The TIAGo robot, developed by PAL Robotics, will be employed to autonomously navigate and perform surveillance tasks within care facilities. This includes dynamic adaptation to changes in the environment, ensuring safe and efficient operation.

The SAFELY project is set to make a significant impact in healthcare by providing a marketable solution that enhances patient safety and supports medical staff.

Ongoing tasks:

In December 2023, we had a first in-person contact to gather initial insights on which tasks the robot should perform.
Based on that feedback, from Jan 15th to Jan 28th, we will run “in-situ” user requirements gathering. The novel process consists on deploying a low-fidelity prototype to collect needs from real use of a system. The robot is teleoperated in this phase, so we can try spontaneous requests from users to incorporate in the design process.